India's Growth - Luxury for the rich, squalor for the poor

There is a lot of hype in the media about India’s booming
economy. The truth is that this affects a small minority of the 1.2 billion
population. Some 300 million Indians survive on less than $1 a day. In this
situation there is revolutionary ferment taking place that will shake India to its
foundation.

The media hype about India's robust growth and
development obscures the harsh realities the vast majority of Indians have to
face in their daily lives. According to Randeep Ramesh, writing in The Guardian
(April 5, 2006), "India is one
land, but the rich and poor exist on apparently different planets. Virtually
unreported are some awful daily realities: the rate of malnutrition in children
under five is a shamefully high 45%. Less than a third of India's homes
have a toilet and most women have to wait until the dark of evening to venture
out to answer the call of nature. The talk of making poverty history sounds
hollow in India,
a land which is home to a third of the world's poor and where some 300 million
people live on less than $1 a day."

Even in macroeconomic terms India is still poor and small. It
holds a sixth of the world's population but accounts for just 1.3% of world exports
of goods and services, and 0.8% of foreign direct investment flows. Laxmi
Mittal, the boss of the world's largest steel firm Mittal Steel, is an Indian
entrepreneur that has gone so global that his company produces no steel at all
in his homeland.

Even the investment that is trickling in is becoming more
and more capital intensive rather than labour intensive. Hence this whole
propaganda that investment creates more jobs is being proven to be utterly
false in India.

The entire IT/BPO (Info Tech/ Business Process Outsourcing)
industry in India
employs only about 1.3 million people out of a workforce of more than 400
million. According to a Boston
consulting group, "a typical annual salary for an Indian IT engineer is $ 5000
and for a graduate with a masters degree in business $7,500 - about one tenth
of their American equivalents."

Their working conditions are so miserable and so crowded
that, for example, in an office block in Chennai staff are squeezed into every
available corner and computer terminals are used for an average of 2.2 shifts a
day. Another company, Kirlosar Oil Engines Limited (KOEL), in the past
financial year increased its profits by 46%. Its engine sales topped 10 billion
rupees for the first time and its total exports surpassed the Rs 1 billion
figure. One would have thought therefore that it was generating a large number
of jobs. In reality it has not taken on a single worker since 1982. The average
age of its 2000-strong workforce is now 47. Its success is not the result of the
deployment of large numbers of low wage Indian workers. It comes from
continuous automation and improvements in productivity. In the most extreme
example, according to The Economist, one worker is responsible for 27 machines.
Yet another example is Bajaja Autos, a producer of scooters, motorcycles and
three-wheelers. Last year the firm produced 2.4 million vehicles with 10,500
workers. In the early 1990s it was producing one million vehicles with 24,000
workers!

This is happening in a country with a rapidly growing
workforce. Its young population will add 71 million people to its workforce
over the next five years, or nearly one quarter of the world's new workers. In
urban India
this whole phenomenon of liberalisation is playing havoc with city dwellers. As
India's
famous novelist and social activist Arundhati Roy put it, "This project of
corporate globalization has created a constituency of very rich people who are
very thrilled by it. They do not care about the hawkers being cleared from the
streets or the slums that are disappearing overnight. India is not
coming together but coming apart because liberalisation has convulsed the
country at an unprecedentedly unacceptable velocity."

Now half of Delhi's
14 million inhabitants live in slums and 18,000 structures outside of slum
clusters have been deemed illegal. The campaign to evict slum-dwellers from the
banks of the Yamuna has forced at least 280,000 people from their homes. "It's
creating an apartheid city, making very clear separations between the rich and
poor," said Miloon Kothari, UN special Rapporteur on housing rights. "The
situation in the resettlement areas is horrendous, far from the jobs and city
services," he said.

But if this capitalist aggression is devastating the lives
of the workers and the urban poor, it has had a more devastating effect in the
villages where 70% of India's
population lives. As Roy says, "where India does not
live, it dies."

There have been reports of the phenomenon of endemic farmer
suicides across India.
In some states it worse than in others. The arrival of new pesticides,
genetically modified seeds and swanky tractors that soak up increasingly
expensive fuel have pushed up the cost of production. The last vestiges of
Indian government support and subsidies were withdrawn a few months ago. The
result is that Indian farmers have been impoverished in just a few short years.
Many have borrowed to stay alive - first from the banks then from the usurious
moneylenders. Chained in poverty by debts they cannot pay, farmers are forced
to sell first their carts, and then their cattle followed by their land and
homes. Some offer a kidney for 1,000,000 rupees. Others have put up entire
villages for sale, but thousands more have resorted to commit suicides,
sometimes with the same pesticides they were to use on their crops.

Whereas on the one hand this abject poverty and destitution
has led farmers to self-destruction, there is also a stirring of a rapidly
expanding mood of revolt in the rural areas. Various Maoist and other insurgent
groups are leading this. We see this revolt in a large cross-section of the
Indian countryside, from the borders of Nepal to the shores of Tamil Nadu.

According to a survey by the New Delhi
based Institute of Conflict Management, the insurgency is taking place in 15
states of India.
It says that Maoist presence is visible in 170 districts and concludes that,
"Now the government can only ignore it at its own peril."

Apart from Chattishgarh, the movement is very strong in the
Gadchiroli and Chandpur districts of Maharashtra, the whole of Jharkhand, the
central Bihar district of Aurangabad, Jahanabad, Nawada and Patna. The story is similar in areas of West Bengal, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. In many of these
places the Maoists are running a parallel administration, where people go to
get justice and pay taxes. In their areas they charge traders and forest
contractors 10 percent of their income.

Bangalore,
India's silicon
valley, is also facing resistance from the tribes and Dalits (lower castes) who
form the backbone of the insurgency. Up till now the Indian states have failed
to control these insurgencies, rather they are gaining ground and drawing more
and more rural youth into their fold. These insurgents have also used the urban
centres as hideouts and for logistical support, including the transportation of
arms and mobilization. Meanwhile the armed insurgency in Kashmir
with its ebbs and flows goes on unabated.

The Congress dominated UDF (United Democratic Front) regime
has accelerated these "neo-liberal" economic policies. These were being pursued
by the previous BJP regime, which led to its humiliating defeat in the 2004
elections. In 1991, faced with an external-payments crisis, Manmohan Singh, now
the prime minister, began to open up the economy. It is ironic that Nehru's own
Congress party dismantled the old state capitalism also know as Nehruvian
Socialism. It signified the failure of the system, but the shift to so-called
"trickle down economy" has proved to be an even greater curse for the vast majority
of the Indian populace. About 770 million people are not part of the market for
which these economic policies have been brought into play. According to a
survey conducted by the Goldman Sachs investment firm, India has a
population of 1200 million yet only 58.5 million have a yearly income of $4,400
per annum. This shows the limits of the market and the exclusion of a vast
majority from its mechanisms. In reality in the last 15 to 20 years only a
small minority has benefited anything from the economic cycle unleashed by
these market reforms.

However, it's not just on the economic front that the BJP
and Congress are pursuing the same policies. On several political and social
issues their policies are not only similar but the two main parties of the Indian
bourgeoisie actually collude on various issues.

The Muslim population of the Indian state of Gujarat was
shocked when, at the request of (BJP) chief minister Narendra Modi, India's
Congress-led government rushed a contingent of army and armed police units into
the state in May to intimidate and, if necessary, to suppress protests by
Muslims against religious repression. One reason Congress is so willing to
connive with Modi's BJP regime in Gujarat is
that it enjoys strong backing from big business for pursing "investor-friendly
reform" policies. They are the same as those being pursued by the central
government: tax cuts (for the rich), the diverting of public funds from social
expenditure to profit-generating infrastructure projects, privatisation and deregulation.
Indeed, the Modi government has been dubbed the most business friendly in India.

In May 2005 the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, which is headed by
Sonia Gandhi, issued a report that hailed Gujarat as the best governed state in
India and gave it top billing in what it termed the "Economic Freedom Index",
i.e. ranking of states according to how business friendly they are.

The report declared "safety of life... an essential component
of economic freedom". It blithely ignored the 2002 pogrom and ongoing persecution
of the state's Muslims. In fact it endorsed the brutalities perpetrated by this
bigoted monster in Gujarat. The Congress in Gujarat has also openly adapted to Modi's communalist
politics.

As Karanti Kumara wrote, "The irony is that the CPI(M) and
its Left Front allies have played a major role in creating the myth that
Congress represents a secular and progressive alternative to the communal BJP...
Yet as its support for the criminally culpable Modi government amply
demonstrates, the Congress will not shy away from adapting to and conniving
with communal forces. Whether it be for reasons of political expedience or to
uphold the interests of capital against the working class and the oppressed."

It's not just that the CPI(M), with the Left Front, is
continuing its support for the regime in Delhi
carrying out these anti-people policies. Its leaders are themselves trying to
pursue these policies in the provinces where they are in power.

The most glaring example is that of West
Bengal, where the CPI(M) and Left Front have been in power for 28
years. The CPI(M) chief minister of West Bengal,
Buddhadeb Bhattacharya taking a cue from the Chinese Stalinists is pushing
through an ambitious economic reforms programme. His approach is capitalist and
against any Communist principles. He has invited foreign investment, privatised
state owned companies, banned unionisation in several sectors and is pushing to
make West Bengal a major IT hub.

According to the BBC correspondent in Delhi, Sanjay Majumdar, "Indian business
leaders have openly expressed their admiration for the chain smoking and
austere Bhattacharya, saying they hoped his party bosses could emulate his
pragmatic approach."... Sanjay adds, "...moves that have often earned him the ire
of his party's Politburo members." More closer to the truth is the fact that
the ire comes from the rank and file workers rather than the ossified bosses in
the Politburo.

The rise of the CPs and the left in Indian politics is an
iron paradox. The masses have voted for them because they want a change and yet
the leadership of these left parties is bent upon preserving capitalism in the
pretext of "Democracy" and "Secularism".

If we look at the 58 years of India's
history since independence, the belated ruling classes of India have not
been able to fulfil or complete a single task of the National Democratic
Revolution. There is more communal and ethnic violence in India than
perhaps any other country in the world. From Kashmir
to Nagaland there is oppression of the various nationalities. The agrarian
reforms have ended up in disaster. The rising rate of farmer suicides indicates
the failure of the agrarian revolution. Parliamentary democracy is a farce. It
is a sort of a parliamentary apartheid where only people from the moneyed classes
can enter these institutions. The minority that comes from the CPs tries to
consolidate rather than to expose the reactionary character of these
institutions. Its farce of national sovereignty has been exposed by the slavish
role and attitude of the Indian bourgeoisie towards ferocious US imperialism.

The state capitalism of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s failed
miserably. The policies of "trickle down" economics have also been a disaster
for the masses. The BJP was kicked out in 2004. The Congress regime is lurching
from one crisis to another. The BJP is in disarray and decline. In the recent
state elections the masses gave the highest ever vote to the left parties. If
the left party leaders continue to preserve capitalism then the only road will
be neo-liberal economics. It will mean bliss for the rich and squalor for the
working classes.

Hence the CP leaders cannot continue their hold on their
parties with these contradictory policies. On the one hand they are supporting
this regime, inflicting these vicious attacks on the working class. On the
other hand, due to the pressures from below they have to stage demonstrations
and organise protests. After expressing themselves on the electoral plane, the
workers have expressed themselves through the All-India transport strike of
June 14. The CP leaders were pulled into this action by the rising militancy of
the Indian proletariat. This dual game cannot go on. There is already a growing
ferment within the ranks of the CPs. There is an increased questioning and
critical attitude amongst the workers and these are beginning to be felt within
these left parties.

It is not an accident that both the Congress and the BJP
fervently opposed this strike against oil price rises. This was moving towards
a general strike, had not the leadership of the CPs intervened to control and
limit it.

India
today is in the throes of turmoil, severe crisis, impoverishment and social
unrest. After 58 years of interrupted bourgeois rule India is still "living in many
centuries". The caste system has not been obliterated. It has become an ugly
stigma on Indian society. The infrastructure is in a shambles. The social
sectors are in decline. The masses are beginning to lose their patience. The
Indian proletariat has a tradition a great struggles and revolutionary
movements. The elements of a new wave of mass upsurge are beginning to emerge
and express themselves.

The only way out of this misery and destitution is through
the overthrow of the capitalist system, through a socialist revolution. Now the
CP leaders have even receded from their previous erroneous position of the
two-stage theory of Stalinism. They have in reality abandoned the second,
socialist stage. Now all their politics and policies are limited to the first,
democratic stage. But the tasks of the democratic revolution cannot be
completed on a capitalist basis. Only by carrying out bold socialist measures
can the resources be created to fulfil the democratic demands of society.

The conditions are yearning for socialist transformation.
Stormy events loom large on the horizon. They will shake the CPs to their
foundations. The leadership will either have to change course or abdicate. This
ferment will give rise to the Marxist forces within the CPs, trade unions,
youth and students. A Marxist tendency with a correct ideology, perspective
method and with the will and determination to carry them through, will lay the
basis of a socialist victory. The oppressed masses cannot endure this
exploitative and brutal system any longer. With a Marxist leadership and
organization they can win this class war. A socialist revolution in India would galvanise a revolutionary upsurge
across Asia and beyond.